More than 600 rebuilding plans have been submitted in the Eaton fire burn zone, but only 18 have been approved for permits, prompting a terse demand this week from the area’s top elected official to step up the permitting pace.
“We are simply not meeting the mark,” Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger told those gathered at a weekly virtual Altadena Community meeting on Monday. “I hear your frustration, and quite frankly I share them. We are far behind where we should be.”
Barger, who has pledged to cut red tape in the rebuild process, said she has directed the county’s Public Works Department to “drill down” on the issue, with hopes of finding where the bottlenecks are.
Public Works Department officials said “all (permitting) departments are committed to expedited reviews.”
Ciara Barnett, assistant deputy director L.A. County Public Works, confirmed that as of Monday 14 building permits in Altadena had been approved out of 610 building applications received.
Among those, 351 zoning reviews had been cleared by planners, and 203 building plans were in the process of being reviewed, once full building plans have been prepared and submitted. The average turnaround time for approval is 42 business days, according to Public Works.
By Tuesday, the county’s online dashboard had been updated to 674 applications received and 18 permits issued.
Interestingly, the numbers in the pipeline are a fraction of the larger toll of destruction — an estimated 6,000 destroyed or damaged parcels in the unincorporated area.
Officials acknowledge that the permitting process had gotten off to a slower start. But they point to a pace that has already picked up as more applications come in.
Planning averages three business days for reviews and the Building Department averages five days for reviews, Barnett said.
Barnett pointed to alternate ways that can shorten the approval time.
For instance, residents can pick a pre-approved design plan and submit with their permit application. So far, more than two dozen such plans have been submitted for review, according to the county. The county has approved 19 plans.
Pre-approved standard plans have been reviewed and pre-approved for compliance with the applicable zoning and building code requirements.
There’s also self-certification. In the county’s new pilot program, architects and engineers can self-certify that their plans align with the county building code. That process bypasses the need for a full plan check review by the Public Works Department. Barnett said 27 architects or engineers have applied for self-certification and nine have been approved.
Barnett said part of the streamlining process has been creating one unified application for all permitting departments: County Fire, Public Health, Regional Planning and Public Works.
Barger herself has touted her own effort, which would defer payment of rebuilding fees in the Altadena fire zone.
The motion, brought last week, says the county could get reimbursed through the property owners’ insurance. The motion also mentions waiving the fees if insurance doesn’t cover this expense, but it appears the county would need to find “a long-term funding plan” in order to make up the lost revenues for completely waiving fees for eligible owners, the motion stated.
The details of the proposal are not yet clear. Barger’s motion was introduced Tuesday, May 27, and is set to be heard at a future Board of Supervisors meeting. It contains strong language favoring deferring or waiving rebuilding fees.
“For families grappling with loss, displacement, and the slow grind of insurance claims, these fees represent an insurmountable barrier to returning home,” wrote Barger in her motion.
“My goal is to ensure that no fees need to be paid while the county identified funding to waive them,” Barger said Monday. “Permit fees are one of the first hurdles in rebuilding. We don’t want them to be the reason why someone chooses not to rebuild.”
Barger and several public officials have vowed to establish a streamlined, speedy recovery process.
And while cleanup of ash and debris has moved at a swift pace, actual building has so far been sparse in the unincorporated area.
Almost four months after Margot Stueber’s Altadena home of 18 years burned down in the Eaton fire, construction workers broke ground on her new home in late April, a milestone in the area where many property owners and leaders even then were pushing hard to pick up the pace of rebuilding.
On Monday, April 28, Stueber cut a red ribbon while standing where her home near Altadena Drive and Fair Oaks Avenue used to be before the catastrophic Jan. 7 fire tore through the town.
“This is the first day of my new life,” Stueber said at the time.
Stueber’s was one of 9,414 structures destroyed by the fire in early January.
At the time, officials and residents touted the action. But like Barger, they believe things need to faster, especially as they look across the county to the coast, where in the city of L.A. as of late May, 54 permits for 40 addresses related to rebuilding efforts had been issued for projects in the Palisades. There, too, hundreds of permit applications are in the process of being reviewed.
Just last week, in front of a group of Altadena residents and leaders, Paradise Mayor Steve Crowder and former Paradise housing program supervisor Kate Anderson shared that their once-fire ravaged town remains on a long road of recovery, but has taken major steps in rebuilding. But it takes patience, they noted.
“You have to collaborate with everyone,” Anderson said. “Part of our long term recovery was working with our county in ways we had never worked with before. We were separate entities before the fire with little interaction and suddenly we all had something in common.”